Email "Spoofing"
Ebay/PayPal Toolbar Account Guard
Filtering Your Mail
Identity Theft - what to do
How To Fight Spam
The "419" Scam Or Nigerian Letter
Trouble With Spam And New Ways To Deal With It   

 WHAT IS "SPOOFING?"
Another way in which Spammers are attacking is through fraudulent email.  They are sending out emails that are falsely made to appear they are from legitimate users and or companies.  These emails, commonly referred to as "spoofing" messages, are sent in an attempt to collect sensitive personal information from recipients who reply to the message or click on a link to a Web page requesting this information.  If you receive any mail addressed as being from cvc.net or cvcwireless.net that appears to be questionable, do not open it - instead please contact the office.  When spoofs surface we work diligently to stop them before they pass through the system.

We advise you to be cautious of email messages that ask you to submit information such as your credit card number or email password, CVC Internet will never ask you for sensitive personal information such as passwords, bank accounts, credit card numbers, personal identification number (PINS), drivers license numbers or Social Security numbers in an email.  If you ever need to provide information in email form to CVC Internet please create a new email in your mail program and address it to office@cvc.net.

If you have any doubt about whether an email message is from cvc.net do not respond to it or click on nay of the links in the email message.  Please do not change the subject line or forward the email as an attachment.

 IDENTITY THEFT - WHAT TO DO
If you entered personal information such as your password, social security number or credit card numbers into a website based on a request from a "spoofed" email, you need to take immediate action to protect your identity.  If you become a victim of identity theft, do the following:

File a police report -

Contact the fraud departments of each of the three major credit bureaus to report the identity theft and request that the bureaus place a fraud alert status in your file.  To report fraud call:

Equifax: 800-525-6285
Experian: 800-397-3792
Trans Union: 800-680-7289

Contact the Federal Trade Commission's toll-free Identity Theft Hotline at 1-877-438-4338.  The FTC will take a report and place your name in a nationwide consumer fraud database shared by local, state and federal law enforcement agencies.

Finally, contact your creditors and inform them of your being a victim of identity theft.  Close your accounts, change all account passwords, and obtain new credit, debit, and ATM cards, etc.

 new! ebay / paypal toolbar and account guard
As part of an ongoing effort to enable PayPal users to protect themselves from "spoof" (fake) websites, eBay and PayPal have developed "Account Guard," a new feature on the eBay Toolbar that identifies when you ar eon an authentic eBay or PayPal website and warns you when you are on a potentially fraudulent website.

eBay Toolbar is a free, downloadable tool that will help you protect your PayPal account.  This is not a service provided by CVC Internet, please refer to eBay for more information:

http://www.ebay.com/ebay_toolbar 

 THE TROUBLE WITH SPAM AND NEW WAYS TO DEAL WITH IT
The unwanted junk email that comes flooding into our email each day feels like a sustained attack from unseen enemies.  The offers of herbal Viagra, cheap ink-jet cartridges, jobs working from home, bigger body parts, smaller mortgage payments, porn, wealth, beauty, and many, many more go unheeded by the vast majority of recipients.

Ever-increasing Spam

 The amount of global Spam sent each day has increased by a factor of five in the past year according to some estimates.  Predictions conservatively show that the total number of Spam email messages sent will increase from 10 billion per day today to 30 billion a day by 2006.

It's obvious that Spam "evildoers" are just scattering junk mail to the wind, trolling for suckers.  They'll Spam 10 million people in order to make 100 sales.  But the net effect is needless aggravation, wasted time and money, and the unspoken psychological damage of being unable to stop the mess from pouring into our mailboxes.

Declaration of war

Spam is spoiling the Internet, reducing the convenience and value of email, and making people think twice about letting kids go online.  Current legislation doesn't work.  Email can come from anywhere in the world.  Filters are temporary because spammers figure out how to get around them.  Lawsuits have done nothing to slow the onslaught.

Yes, it's a war.  They're attacking us - and we've got to fight back.  We'll never end all Spam forever.  The goal is to make Spamming expensive, difficult and spectacularly unpleasant enterprise that just isn't worth the trouble.

Spamming is expensive and difficult.  Sending millions of email messages costs tens of thousands of dollars.  Changing ISP's, keeping identities secret, evading the law (something Spammers cannot avoid) all costs a bundle.

The goal of Spam should be to make it as difficult, expensive, and painful as possible by working to end Spam for ourselves, and for less technical people who need help stopping Spam.

Anti-Spam software and services

• It turns out that the easiest, cheapest, and most effective way to stop Spam also helps harm Spammers worldwide.  It's called SpamNet from Couldmark.  This program only works with Outlook, but will soon work with Outlook Express.  This is a free download.
  
  The installation creates a "Spam" folder in Outlook and dumps most of your Spam there automatically.  When Spam isn't caught by SpamNet, you can simply select that message and click "Block."  The best part of this program is when you click on "Block" it tells central SpamNet servers that the message is Spam and the message, sender, and advertiser are placed on the global block list, which means you are helping to identify Spam for other users.  The software becomes more effective for you, and more damaging to Spammers with each passing day.
  

• MailWasher is another program that is very effective on the war against Spam.  MailWasher is highly configurable shareware so you can customize it until it eliminates 99% of all Spam.  The best feature of this program is the automatic fake error message to the spammers telling their automated computers that you email address is no longer valid.
  

• There are a wide variety of other anti-spam solutions available.  Some cost money, others are free.  Some emphasize effectiveness, others convenience.  Each taking a slightly different approach to stopping Spam.  It is recommended that you experiment with a variety of programs to see which works best for you.  Here are some other programs available:
  
  Mail Shell
  Spam Assassin
  Choice Mail
  Spam Killer
  Spam Cop
  I Hate Spam
  Postini

Anti-Spam Tips and Tricks

The reality of Spam is that you as a user need to valid email addresses to register for websites, verify passwords and so on.  Some of those websites sell or rent their list of email address to Spammers.

Here is a list of techniques used for managing Spam in random order:

• Ask your friends and family to never send e-cards to your main email address.  (In doing so, they risk giving your email address to spammers.)
  

• Never forward jokes or chain letters without first deleting the addresses that traveled with it.  You can use Blind Carbon Copies to avoid sharing email addresses with the rest of the world.  You just never know who will get their hands on those addresses!
  

• Never reply to Spam, even to request removal.  When you reply, you verify that your email address is current, which means Spammers can sell your address to other Spammers and make even more money.
  

• Use mail filters in your mail program to block unwanted mail.
  

• Create a special email address for email newsletters, or even a separate address for each newsletter you receive.  (This will show you who sells your email address.)
  

• Never post your private email address on the Web,  in a chat room, message board, or anywhere else.
  

• Never reward Spammers by buying anything advertised through Spam.
  

• Create a rule in your mail program that automatically deletes any email that doesn't contain your email address in the "To:" field.  (Make sure you exempt any newsletters you want to receive.)

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